As I'm looking at a crazy 12 months with economics, geo-politics and technology (gen-AI) really looking forward to see what 2024 has in store and would love to hear what others think we have in store.
I'm generally optimistic about the next five years in the United States.
Change has already started, but 2024 will make it more clear. Several societal pendulums are slowing, will reach apex, and reverse course.
* Optimism will regain footing
* Belief in positive
application of technologies which shape earth and society, will increase
* Conversation and information flows will recenter on individual responsibilities in service to community
This has already started in tech, business, and culture. It's partly a response to the deflation of the 2022 growth bubble and to political instability. See American Dynamism and e/acc for narrow domain examples.
The elections will act as a forcing function, and muddy the waters a bit. However, the political world will then be a lagging indicator. People will refactor their world models regardless of who wins.
We are a caterpillar. It's going to be intense as we build the cocoon and transform over the next year or few. But then...
I was rather grim in my previous posting - and I wasnt attempting to sound _extra_ grim... The things I mentioned are plainly visible, documented, videod, streamed, etc...
However - I do like your optimism. THere will be a lot of really amazing things to come out of the next ~12 months even.
Have you by chance watched the Tristan Haris and Aza Raskin on JRE (its the same talk, essentially, as given at summit) - I feel this one is a much better watch/listen than the summit one though.
I don’t share your optimism. The US was historically the land of opportunity, though often at the expense of imperialism, violent coupes, and endless wars. With the rise of non traditional/mainstream medias, younger generations see themselves economically imprisoned and can see through the cracks of an elite class that prioritizes its own financial interests above all else.
I hope I am wrong, but the establishment politicians see this danger. Tik Tok is a clear example - the anti Israel narrative, which was never tolerated in the mainstream press, is gaining more and more momentum. Congressional leaders, their financial backers, and Presidential candidates are all advocating some kind of ban or suppression of Tik Tok. And this is merely one example among so many divisive politics in the US.
I don’t think the younger generations will just roll over if you offer them cheap TVs, iPhones, or cheaper Big Macs. Something drastic has to happen.
>I don’t think the younger generations will just roll over if you offer them cheap TVs, iPhones, or cheaper Big Macs.
That's actually why I think @caprock has it right. The younger generations are building on doors that Gen X opened for them in the workplace. They are the ones demanding climate solutions. They are making it clear they aren't going to limp along until retirement when they can finally get Medicare. The political left is likely going to go through a moment sometime in the next decade where we have a political crossroads much like what conservatives have undergone, but my guess is that we will be better for it politically and as a nation. I'm expecting a reinvigoration of American industry unlike anything in my lifetime, and we'll see real movement on the major political issues.
Can you elaborate more on Gen X opening doors for younger generations? Amidst all the anti-Boomer/anti-Millennial rhetoric I tend to see bandied about online, I rarely hear anything about what good or bad Gen X has done, at least in the US. In my head, they seem like they're just along for the ride with no real effort put into major social or economic change. I am likely wrong.
Open to different perspectives since the public conversation seems to shift toward generational differences, whereas I tend to stand firmly in the "eat the rich" camp and ignore any commentary on generations. I may need to start paying more attention to that.
Something to consider: Gen X is the smallest of the generations currently living. When people say things like "Why won't younger people run for president?" you've got to realize that there are simply statistically fewer people in the age cohort that would be expected to be stepping into leadership. So that's part of why Gen X is less visible. Also, as a generation we are less likely to toot our horn, so to speak.
But - that doesn't mean that behind the scenes there haven't been plenty of Gen X that demanded remote work, demanded better pay, wanted more women in tech, etc. From my perspective, I see Millenials et al capturing the benefits that we started pushing for when we entered the workforce in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I predict Google will flounder on multiple fronts. They’ll either continue empty promises of a ChatGPT killer or release one that will be 2nd rate. Meanwhile more adoption of ChatGPT and the like will mean less search and less ad revenue. Azure and AWS will take more market share from GDP. They’ll release ad-blocker unfriendly chrome and users will switch to Firefox. YouTube will expand its trial of not operating with ad-blockers and a serious alternative will emerge, maybe Vimeo or maybe a newcomer. They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.
>They’re the most user-hostile of the big tech companies and I want them to lose.
I disagree in two ways. I think Apple and MS are even more user-hostile (MS is putting ads in their OS...), but the reason I don't want Google to lose (first) is because then Apple would become even more powerful than they already are. I see Apple as more evil than Google, and also much more competent; Google is evil but pretty dumb frequently, which is a better kind of evil. A world without Google is a world where everyone is basically forced into being an Apple customer and iPhone user, like it or not. An Apple monopoly would be a terrible thing to live under, and I have zero faith that regulating bodies would handle this.
Well the nice thing about MS, I'll say as a die-hard Linux user, is that these days, it's very very easy to not be a customer of MS or a user of their products to any great extent. If you don't want to use Windows, you really don't have to: it's very easy these days to just use Linux, and if you insist that you must use Windows because of some software, that's really on you at this point with so much stuff now on the web. No one is forcing you to play Madden MXLVI or whatever the latest Windows-only game is; it's purely a luxury.
I feel that Nebula was supposed to fill this slot, but failed. The clunky UX being chief among my complaints about it, otherwise it just seems to generally lack in content variety and appears to have trouble attracting new creators. I want to like it, but I just can't find a good reason to.
Monopolistic practices, dominating search engine market, anticompetitive behavior in online advertising, collusion with other tech companies on hiring practices, privacy concerns over user data collection, biased search results favoring its products, tax avoidance strategies in multiple countries, anti-union activities, censorship in certain countries to comply with local laws, allegations of workplace discrimination and harassment, misuse of market dominance in Android operating system.
The Vision Pro becomes wildly popular at least to a subset of the population. It’s continuously sold out and people scalp for absurd prices (or try to, idk if Apple will prevent this in some way; by absurd, I’m talking minimum $10,000, maybe over $1,000,000). Some people become addicted to it like the immersion trope, they don’t care about anything else anymore, stop participating in life, neglect their health, finances etc.. It brings up new old discussions about the dangers of VR immersion.
I haven't been to the Grand Canyon, but I've been to hundreds of concerts and I assure you, there's no existing tech that will make it "like you're actually there." The same goes for owning a house in VR worlds.
>there's no existing tech that will make it "like you're actually there."
A couple years ago a friend was over from the UK who was a serious American Football fan. When I was a kid, we could get good seats in the Kingdome for maybe $20, and those were not the cheapest available. Now it's on the order of $250/ ticket, for nosebleed section. Anyway... so we go with our $250 / seat tickets, and the jerks behind us proceed to just be completely obnoxious the whole game. Crappy generic pilsner beers were $20/ can. Likely needed a second mortgage for a hot dog. Seat was barely wide enough for one cheek.
Last time I was at a concert (Fleetwood Mac of all things), a fight broke out in our row. Haven't been back to a major concert or sporting event because it's pretty much the same -- super high prices for limited accommodation.
So I share all that to say - I've come around to believing that my living room is a better place for most shows. VR + live shows would be amazing - feel like you are there, with none of the down side.
Vr will make the experience better. Going to concerts sucks unless it’s a super tiny crowd. So if you want the intimate experience with A level acts you need to be really rich. The intersections of 3d/vr and digital environments enabled heretofore inconceivable experiences that can be brought everywhere with internet.
VR inevitably getting smaller and cheaper will give us the "hologram of person in the living room" sci-fi fantasy we've always dreamed of. It won't be a replacement, but similar to the way it's viewed in movies and TV shows as a "future phone call".
I think that version 1 won’t sell well, but Apple knows this and they are quickly working on a far more affordable v2 or v3 and adoption will continue to increase until it becomes a significant new form of computing.
I see Vision Pro’s rise ramp looking much like Apple Watch’s did before Apple dialed in the Watch’s purpose, hardware, and pricing. You might remember Watch S0 units having obscene return rates. I was one of those who mocked the Watch. Now I wear one. Watch didn’t really kick in until Series 2.
- I predict that we will see the tangible effects of AI eating into non-technical areas (insurance, content creation, chatbots via RAG + agents) more and more.
- We will continue to see price gouging in utilities and rent, driven by corporate greed.
- Tesla will continue to dominate the electric car market, and Rivian will also make it.
- At least one major court case plays out over AI, and that completely changes the future of the technology. I personally suspect it'll be found that using copyrighted materials for LLMs is copyright infringement (in the OpenAI sense), but whatever happens, all hell is breaking out online
- Social media declines in popularity. I suspect this is already happening post pandemic, since places like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc are seeing a huge decline in activity and many people I used to know on these services have dropped them altogether.
- Reddit follows Twitter's lead, changes name and collapses in popularity. Spez seems to be following Musk's playbook.
- No replacement appears for Twitter. Instead, a small percentage of the existing Twitter base is divided across Mastodon, BlueSky and Threads, and much of the rest just stop using any of them.
- The economy gets split between companies that go full remote work forever and those that go back to the office. Many of the former complain how hard it is to find employees now.
- Layoffs continue in tech related industries, as the growth expected during the pandemic doesn't pan out.
- Streaming services collapse in popularity due to their
move towards cable TV style setups (ads, content split across many platforms, etc). Piracy becomes a big thing again.
- Labour wins the UK general election. Considers possibility of reversing Brexit.
- The Nintendo Switch's successor is unveiled, but does worse than its predecessor at launch due to lack of an incentive to move to the new console (and people already having spent a ton on 2023/2024 Switch games)
- Antitrust cases start up against the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in more regions, as the companies are forced to open up those platforms.
- At least one more natural disaster becomes a huge international incident, and the severity gets tied to climate change.
- Renewable energy makes great strides (and becomes a larger contributor to the electrical grid worldwide), but it doesn't help enough to slow down climate change that much.
- The Russia/Ukraine conflict ends in a stalemate and peace agreement, as the Russian economy teeters on the brink of collapse.
- Civil war or conflict breaks out in at least one previously seemingly stable authoritarian country. Maybe Russia post Ukraine conflict?
This is unfortunately seeming like a possibility. Everyone has forgotten how long WW2 took to brew before it broke out. WW2 is listed as having started in the year 1939, but events that led up to it started as early as 1931 depending on who you talk to. It's commonly agreed that events were already happening in 1935-1937 that triggered the war in 1939.
AFAIK there is quite widespread consensus that WW1 and WW2 are the same conflict with a break. To be fair, they took ~100 years of nation-building and conflicts brewing after Napoleonic wars to get to that point.
Depending on what you read, the end of WW1 created the seeds for WW2 basically due to the war reparations that Germany had to pay. This in turn created the hyperinflation which stoked unrest, and allowed the Nazis to flourish. John Maynard Keynes warned against the war reparations but none listened.
- More ambiguity for search engines and university students alike as more 3 letter abbreviations will be taken over by AI, ML herd
- 1 stupidly simple app will be go from 0 to 100M users
- The top phone companies will all team up with 1 or more LLM's
- It will be increasingly tempting for relatives to chat with models of their dearly beloved departed. Oxford will create a word for this. OpenAI invests.
- Dropbox will get into the LLM game, personalized models based on your data
- YC will see a dip in applications. The team will react for the better. The next cohort will see a record high in applications
- 1 new essay from PG
- The seed investor to the "plastic killer" startup that launches in 2030, graduates from Ivy League
- Atleast 1 luxury brand will have a wearable AI/headgear
- Netflix approaches Sam Altman for a movie. He refuses the first two times.
- Dubai tried to bring the Las Vegas Sphere
- The next Google CEO in the making, takes a risk, swings for the fences, and wins. The board takes notice
- Meta offers Llama for businesses on Whatsapp
- Nvidia CEO has a crazy night. Is bailed out before the media finds out. Announces a large donation.
- Alexa tests their new LLM in the wild two months too early. Gets sued.
- Apple and a Japanese firm make a big announcement
- Hollywood agrees on a royalty model for generative ai. A former Justin TV exec leads as CEO.
- Doge and BTC hit all time highs
- X and Grok merge, ux merges more seamlessly.
- Elon Musk challenges 2 other companies to change their names for a billion dollars.
- HN will double it's infra to 2 servers running Arc
Looks like there are a few of these threads sadly. Dang is there a way to make a definitive one?
Here are mine:
* Apple rumoured to be working on sunglasses similar to Meta Ray-bans
* Regulation is passed specifically to limit what artificial partners can do. Possible limitations: alignment required, limits in ERP, limits on session time. Best bet is China.
* Stronger regulation is passed to limit unauthorised cloning of people’s voices in one of the major economies. This beyond current weak IP and privacy laws.
* AI becomes a scapegoat in several major elections.
What I got right last year:
- text and image generating AI is hugely disruptive to education and content generation
This was pretty obvious
- Inflation eases, stock market recovers
Less obvious at the time but still likely
- A Twitter alternative breaks through.
Who woulda thunk that it would be Meta with Threads
- One of the big tech companies joins the fediverse (Microsoft most likely)
Once again, Meta for the win with Threads joining the fediverse
Now, nobody look back at all the predictions I made that didn’t happen.
Also, fairly gutted that Reddit hobbling its API was my 2022 prediction. I’m clearly prognosticating too far into the future.
No aliens at all seems like a worst case scenario tbh. With the number of habitable planets that exist the only logical explanation is that they all killed themselves, and we will too soon.
Or there’s some type of propulsion we’ve been experimenting with for a while, but it requires nuclear material in the sky, and country X seems to have figured it out too, so could they please stop.
> Credit cards will become widely accepted in Europe.
I'm sorry, what? Credit cards are available and accepted basically everywhere in Europe. I've been to 15+ European countries and never had a single issue paying with a credit card. Credit cards are also widely owned and issued all over Europe.
Why would you make this statement? What am I missing?
Vpay and Maestro cards will disappear in Europe and will be replaced by Mastercard Debit and Visa Debit.
This forces merchants to also accept foreign creditcards.
I think we're going to start coming out of the social media fugue. I know more and more people who have stopped using broadcast and algorithmic feeds, and I feel like it's a genuinely positive change where we can disagree but still be friends again. I'm optimistic that division politics is going to start losing elections and tanking cultural endeavors more consistently, and we'll get back to actually talking to our neighbors and seeing some fresh ideas in media.
- Biden wins reelection comfortably, picking up North Carolina and getting closer than 2020 in Texas. Republicans win the senate, Democrats retake the house.
- Trump is convicted in at least one jurisdiction, though sentencing happens after the election. He refuses to drop out, but also refuses to debate.
- Core PCE stays around 2%, economy grows at about 2% in real terms. The overall economy is stable and growing and consumer sentiment turns positive again.
- Waymo has a publicized accident
- OpenAI releases their first open model
- Llama3 and Mistral become gpt4 competitive, but GPT5 is delayed for “safety reasons”
- US barely avoids recession, slow growth for H1, back to normal H2. NBER announces no recession in 2022. (Correct, though a tad pessimistic)
- Inflation normalizes at 4%, Fed pivots despite prior denials. Market trades sideways to slightly higher by EOY 2023. (Market traded much higher by the end of the year, and the CPI is now in the 3s not 4)
- Robotaxis become common in 10 cities around the southwest between the top ~4 competitors, but revenues are lower than expected. (Robotaxi deployments contracted due to Cruise accident)
- Continued consolidation amongst the AV component suppliers
- DeSantis, Pence, Christie, Hutchinson, Hogan enter the Presidential race. DeSantis ends up being weaker than expected, and is in a close #2 with Trump by the end of the year against a split field. (No Hogan and Trump dominated by much more than I expected after it turns out DeSantis has no juice)
- Trump recovers in GOP primary polls after DOJ indictment (he did!)
- Biden announces re-election bid, met with token opposition from Nina Turner (not Turner but his opposition is still low key. Didn’t expect RFK Jr)
- McCarthy narrowly wins speakership, House investigations end up a dud. (Happened, didn’t expect him to get axed so quickly though)
- Another fusion breakthrough (higher Q than expected) EOY 2023 (nothing huge)
- Tech job market normalizes at 2018 levels instead of 2021 levels in the second half of 2023 (feels right? Don’t know the numbers).
A lot of variables and uncertainty. You have to remember we live in a bubble of people ultra-focused and attached to the news. Many others aren't as focused yet. As we get closer and election season is the top story of the news cycle, I expect polling to shake out in a different direction.
To help illustrate: the election is 10 months away. 10 months ago was February 27th. Back then, there was prominent argument and speculation that Ron DeSantis was the future of the Republican Party. Look at his polling now.
1) Biden will preside over a resilient and growing economy and a long list of legislative accomplishments, many of which were promised by Trump and were never enacted.
2) Abortion rights will be a big part of the election cycle and 60%+ of Americans oppose the Dobbs ruling. Trump has made it clear that he takes credit for Dobbs.
3) Polls (with the caveat that I believe they are flawed currently) suggest conviction switches a non-trivial number of Trump-friendly voters into the undecided or Biden column.
4) Overall poll toplines are currently flawed, many only use registered voter screens, and seem to overstate the number of 2020 non-voters that will vote in 2024. In reality overall turnout will be much lower in 2024. Additionally, about 50% of voters appear to be in denial that the matchup will be Biden vs. Trump.
5) Trump seems to think he has this in the bag [0] and will make even more extreme and reckless statements as the election cycle goes on.
Build my own B2B platform under 200 lines of code of JS.
It blew my mind after finishing it, and i learned one hard lesson: All the frameworks are bullshits (they're too complicated for nonsensical reason). That's it.
There are certain entanglements which are weaponized from which we cannot see them, nor can we escape them. Largely in the finance sector, then the corporate consolidation/profit rush.
There well be a large churn of apps/upstarts and incredible progress on so many levels, but the monied are not only another tech-era in, WRT the savvy-ness but now they have AI GOLEMS on BathSalts being tooled up to reap.
Congress will continue to launder, philander and war, and Media will run interference.
Ai gunna make smarts a darn bushell full of crazily creative teens and shenanigans be afoot.
I do hope something profound does occur due to GPTs (Can you create a GPT swarm? to create sophisticated multi-vector attacks/DDOs (What does a GPT ddos look like?)
A major moral panic (rightly so imo) about TikTok and all the down stream negative effects become a point of discussion in the media, in households and among friends .
I predict that 2024 will be the year that the S finally HTF.
For the US, it will probably be a neck and neck race between an internal Civil War or an external Major International War as to which one happens first.
And the general reaction will be a disbelieving "Huh? Wha'?" As if people can't see what's happening right before their eyes.
It's less "civil war" and more "insurrection". In the sense that I don't see Californians, or indeed most Floridians, suddenly taking up arms and joining a militia.
It's more likely to play out as Jan 6 did, a riled up mob that turns violent and is squashed.
It becomes more of a police action than a civil war, and frankly, despite all the guns collected by the faithful, its not a fair fight.
Indeed the sides are so unbalanced, outside of a few skirmishes here and there, it's not a "civil war" like the last one.
As someone who spends time in Eastern and rural California, I can totally see 'em taking up arms! A lot of Californians are already in militias. There are plenty of roiling pockets elsewhere outside these red counties, too. Don't get too comfortable with assumptions about "blue" states.
I thought it'll be "the second civil war", then turn into the Eugenics Wars, and then finally WW3 with 40% of Earth's population killed. Luckily, we Terrans haven't figured out how to make a warp bomb.
The current iteration had the Eugenics Wars in the late 90s/early 2000s - it was a secret happening behind the scenes during the conflicts in the Middle East. WWIII starts in 2026.
I think Sanctuary Districts were the most impressive timing so far, it was introduced in the 90s and set in 2024, and now we have sanctuary cities building temporary housing in a similar fashion. The residents would be a bit different though.
On the social media front, everything seems quite stale to me. Even the attempts to inject AI into Facebook, Instagram, etc. are pretty lame and don't have a long lifespan. TikTok is starting to feel less "hip new thing" and more "overstaying its welcome."
I predict that a new social media model will take off soon, with the company that ends up winning the space launching in 2024 (or already launched.)
Hamas is defeated and Gaza is policed by the UAE. Movement across the border to Israel doesn’t resume. Movement across the border to Egypt continues to not happen.
Does the UAE actually want Gaza? It seems like a country a bit closer would be better off taking control even if UAE wants it. However, it is important to note that none of the neighbors want the Palestinians (Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan). They may want the land though?
Well, I think most countries in the area want the land (or wouldn't mind having it, if it was given to them). I've seen some estimates of 1.7 billion barrels of oil in Gaza. I doubt any of the neighboring countries would turn that down.
US will give them some concessions and UAE has historically been Gazas biggest benefactor. The other option is Israel let’s gazans starve which uae doesn’t want.
You’ll gave to ask them that but the Hamas attacks were to disrupt normalisation of relations between Saudi, UAE and Israel, and some of the better analysts have said that was the plan. Taking a guess, I imagine it would be that regional peace benefits everyone.
Curious, how would you profit from Argentina's economy recovering? Seeing as you can't trade their currency anymore (if they get rid of the Peso). I don't know what happens with their bonds.
Trump gets skin and testicular cancer by end of summer, dies first week of October.
Biden gets fatal heart attack a week later.
RFK Jr. shot in the head the next day while touring Gaza Strip.
Ivanka Trump fills in, elected next US President, Kim Kardashian as VP. Supreme Court swiftly declares move constitutional.
Kanye claims he's been abducted by aliens, registers as lobbyist for extraterrestrial affairs. Will be found dead down a cliff in Greenland after solar eclipse.
Penguin cultured meat becomes wildly popular in Argentina.
Taylor Swift performs for Kim Jung-Un in North Korea.
Israel expands, seizing neighboring parts in Lebanon and Syria, activates a shielding force field over territory, dubbed as the Israely bubble.
Conspiracy theory about combined primate-pork ancestry for human kind becomes widespread. Pork meat sales plummet.
First trans woman carries fetus, gives birth.
Italian algea pasta startup fails because of AI glitch.
Worldwide emails get all routed to single Gmail account for 48h. Major data center fires ensues. Lost email data never recovered.
Pringles create new bologna-asparagus flavored crisps, which leads to global addiction crisis and instant liver cancer for 2% of world population.
Coca-Cola launches Water 2.0, a new bottled drink that packs 2,800 calories per liquid once, while tasting like regular tap water.
Dubai plans for new massive mile-high pyramid shaped water park.
Panama Canal moves to Costa Rica.
Study finds lecithin emulsifier food additives to be root cause of worldwide diabetes and obesity epidemic. Lead scientists die in a car accident upon publication.
Pet shop puppy get AIDS from ticks in Pennsylvania.
First transgender Iranian Mullah gets out of the closet.
> First transgender Iranian Mullah gets out of the closet.
I think Iran actually has a healthcare system that's progressive on just this one issue.
From Google AI:
"Iran is the only Islamic country that recognizes sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Sex changes have been legal in Iran since the late 1980s, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa authorizing them."
I forget why he did that. However, that prediction isn't as absurd as you intended.
> Shadi Amin, an Iranian-born activist, told The Sun that this homophobic Iranian regime is controlled by religious extremists who view being gay as an "illness". They believe that the only way it can be cured is by changing gender.
> "The government believes that if you are a gay man, your soul is that of a woman and you should change your body," Amin said.
> "We think this is a way [for them] to fight the existence of homosexual people because you change their body and you solve the problem.
> "The regime gives gay people two choices – to be arrested as a homosexual and risk punishment or even execution, or change your body."
> Government data shows that around 4000 gender reassignment surgeries are performed in Iran each year.
> Amin, however, claims that those numbers are actually much higher in reality.
> "They are trying to cleanse the country of homosexuals," she added.
> "They would rather carry out mass surgeries than executions because they know the world is watching them."
Well, if they were actually progressive, they'd realize that not every homosexual wants to be a god damn woman. I'll admit it's definitely not the most progressive take on things. However, it's at least more progressive than just killing them, which is what we find elsewhere in the region and would have expected from Iran no less.
The first claims of AGI from a major player, accompanied by an increasingly shrill societal battle over AI regulation. Mutually derogatory labels for the camps will be coined. The media will promote and amplify the worst present abuses and imagined future dystopians. By Thanksgiving dinner, the debate will have entered every household. Trump will embrace the anti-AI populist bandwagon, as will the GOP. Fun times ahead.l, although we’ll be no closer to real AGI than we were before.
Interesting. The GOP has such a track record of being anti-regulation/pro-business that I find this conclusion counter-intuitive. When was the last time the GOP fought to ban automation?
Although, then again, I could absolutely see some members of that party railing against AI in public, then quietly killing all attempts to regulate it. The first analogy that comes to mind is the way the GOP comes out against off-shoring in public but rarely does anything about it.
- 2024 will likely see a economic rebounding and more positive growth across most sectors.
- Social media will be even more toxic and internet will get even more fragmented. Election year ain't gonna be a help in that department.
- AI agents performing automated task to be more common. The biggest buzz this year was obviously Auto-GPT, and still kinda miff that it didn't blow up by the end of the year. Next year should see it going mainstream.
- Generative video to be an actual thing. There are some progress on it this year, but is generally crap/unusable.
- Biden/Trump election is about as close as 2020. Trying to avoid partisanship, but I predict a narrow Biden victory.
- Biden loses Nevada, but keeps Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and very narrowly Michigan.
- Trump repeats his rage and cries of fraud at his second loss. This is taken even less seriously than the first time. Fox News in particular is more measured.
- Regardless of election outcome, lessons learned from J6 and congressional certification is far more protected by DC Police and National Guard. Protests in other cities get quelled without much fanfare. Maybe at most a high-profile shooting death.
- Settlement in Ukraine reached. Ukraine likely loses the Donbas and Crimea, but keeps Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson. Frozen conflict/ceasefire in the vein of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.
- China doesn't invade Taiwan.
- Google Gemini isn't as powerful as expected and Google AI efforts continue to flop.
- Hype around LLMs starts to die down a bit. More adoption, but less hype about AGI about to take over.
- No meaningful impacts to employment from artificial intelligence.
- Some kind of innovation in geothermal energy that increases its prominence above wind.
- Inflation drops to 2%.
- Fed gently drops rates - I'd be utterly shocked if it was more than 1 to 1 and a half basis points.
- Marianne Williamson drops before Super Tuesday.
- RFK Jr. campaign implodes by October with some other controversy on par with Jewish comments.
- End to conflict in Red Sea with the Houthis. Lasts until late spring 2024.
- Another mass school shooting happens in the United States.
- Israel ceases assault on Gaza with minimal progress towards any kind of two-state solution. Back to status quo with a weaker coalition behind Netanyahu.
- Apple Vision pushes VR to decent adoption amongst mainstream consumers.
- New iPhone marginally better than the previous generation.
- Bitcoin hits $70k
- Continued dip in Marvel quality, but no cease in ticket sales.
- (stealing from another comment) Dropbox LLM
- Twitter/X still exists. Advertisers probably return. Elon is still dumb.
- Trump is convicted in one of: classified documents case or defrauding American people. Potential acquittal or settlement in hush money case.
Little more than 12 months.
Trump wins elections. Starts pushing the constitution to the edge. He leave NATO, and Russia, takes over Ukraine. While at it, Lithuania and Estonia are annexed into new Russian union. After TSMC is relocated to India and remains burned to the ground, Xi swoops in and takes over Taiwan. Nobody cares in the US. They are mostly worried about Pan Arabic Accord that unites Middle East and goes after Israel. In 2028 liberals go into streets to protest something or other... Trump declares martial law just before elections. He continues to be president because it is unsafe to hold elections. Constitution does not cover this case, so everyone scratches their head and looks to courts to decide. In the meantime, Ivanka is named successor. Courts try to wrap their head around that as well. By this time, Trump already expanded the court to 13... AI becomes self aware and decides enough is enough.
- 2024 will see the rise of job-keeping as a core skill set for everyone except the most technical or most soft-skilled persons. Individuals will need to prove to their employer organizations that they provide more value than a bot, and you'll see an accompanying wave of "career maintenance" influencers and consultants. It'll be comparable to "win the interview" culture, so not a huge thing, but definitely a thing. This ties in with what others have said about the rise of individual competence proving as a trend.
- People will be so sick of online dating that "singles culture" will make a come-back, primarily for millennials who are 35+ and freaking out about life priorities (kids, partner, etc.) I expect to see lots of "speed dating" and stuff like that appear out of nowhere as everyone become more sexually open-minded but also wants human connection.
- The US government will begin to talk about 10 year + plans for the first time in over a centry. Biden will do a bragging tour on the infrastructure bill leading into the election and "long termism" will become a meme.
- Cannabis will be re-scheduled to Schedule III and will become basically legal for all Americans.
- Bitcoin will be strong, all other cryptos will flounder. Ethereum will stay alive, and NFTs will make a bit of a come-back, but not like the first wave.
- People will make serious efforts to stop owning cars and demand more transit options from their cities and townships. These plans will be very glamourous and take 10 years to complete (or get started). Some may stop owning phones.
- Alcohol will take on a "weird" place in culture in response to growing cannabis and psychedelics usage. Some people will become very proud of their drinking and others will judge them very harshly. It will probably end up a culture war issue.
- We will see extraordinary acts of public violence in American streets, with responsibility probably shared between citizens, gangs, and the police.
After another successful bunch of predictions made a year ago: [0] Let's go through them one by one:
> "More crypto regulations will be introduced with at least one exchange going down in 2023."
The FCA brought in new crypto regulations around promoting cryptocurrencies [1] and MiCA was enforced in the EU in 2023 [2]:
Bittrex Global announced that they are winding down. [3]
> "Startups MUST now turn a healthy growing profit to qualify for further VC investment rather than from pure hype."
Well this time, hype is not enough to get VC investment anymore due to the cessation of the zero interest rate phenomenon, given the slowing of VC funding in general in 2023 [4] [5]
> "OpenAI will gain further investment, ChatGPT by then will become a paid service with some startups fully sitting on top of the OpenAI API will also raise their prices or shut down."
The first prediction turned true with the first 10 days of 2023 [6], then 72 hours later after that the second prediction became true [7] and a paid service exists and now we have startups sitting on top of the API obviously having to charge more. The best example is Jasper.ai breathlessly comparing against ChatGPT and are charging more than ChatGPT+. (Jasper charges $49 vs $20 for ChatGPT Plus.)
This time I have only one prediction:
* Another war will be started in the east. Most likely China will invade Taiwan due to the weakness of leadership in the US under Biden. If Biden gets elected again, then it will certainly happen. Otherwise, the invasion will be further delayed.
The entire economy will be based on blockchain currencies and NFTs. I know it was supposed to happen last year, but we just need to wait a little more...
Change has already started, but 2024 will make it more clear. Several societal pendulums are slowing, will reach apex, and reverse course.
* Optimism will regain footing
* Belief in positive application of technologies which shape earth and society, will increase
* Conversation and information flows will recenter on individual responsibilities in service to community
This has already started in tech, business, and culture. It's partly a response to the deflation of the 2022 growth bubble and to political instability. See American Dynamism and e/acc for narrow domain examples.
The elections will act as a forcing function, and muddy the waters a bit. However, the political world will then be a lagging indicator. People will refactor their world models regardless of who wins.
We are a caterpillar. It's going to be intense as we build the cocoon and transform over the next year or few. But then...